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Catalyst (fglrx) issues with XVideo

02-11-2010, 07:42 AM

Hi,

i am trying to get XVideo to work on my box. Currently i am using Ubuntu 9.10 amd64 with stock X.org (1:7.4+3ubuntu7 without the no-backfill patches) and i tried Catalyst 9.10, .11, .12 (which does not seem to support my card) and 10.1 (thanks to the instructions in this forum). My system is a Lenovo T400 with a Radeon 3470. According to xvinfo and the X logfile Xvideo should work, however neither gstreamer, mplayer or vlc will produce anything besides a black box where the video should be when using xv output (audio works fine, neither mplayer nor vlc do print any error messages regarding xv output).

mplayer now works nicely using xv output. However, if i open a video in totem (gstreamer) afterwards xv output still does not work. Once i start totem, close it and afterwards start mplayer xv output does not work anymore either. Doing:

Comment

I think Totem is having fun just setting it's own defaults whenever it starts, that's why you need to reset them each time.

I cannot tell you why it doesn't work though, xv works fine with 9.11, 9.12 and 10.1 on my machine (HD 5770).

Are you using amd64 or ix86? It worked fine previously when i was still using i386, after replacing the harddisk i reinstalled the amd64 version instead.

totem(-gstreamer) uses the default video sink specified with gstreamer-properties for example... but you are right i'll have a closer look at the gstreamer settings and what gstreamer/totem does when initializing the video sink.

I'd really like to use xserver-xorg-ati-radeon instead but somehow video decoding is just to slow at the moment, and i don't want to update to bleeding-edge X, Mesa and Kernel for now. Additionaly the power saving using ForceLowPowerMode produces graphics corruption on my system.

Comment

You are correct, good sir, totem overwrites xv attributes and causes it to not display the video correctly. using xvattr to reset to defaults and testing the xv video using gstreamer-properties works nicely. I'll try to build a version of totem which won't touch the xv attributes and report back. i still the underlying bug is located in fglrx, but as long as this workaround will do the trick i won't complain.

Comment

does the bug apply after a clean boot without touching totem, i.e. having nothing but fglrx defaults? have you tried just starting a minimal X session with nothing but xterm and launching mplayer from there? That would at least narrow down the culprit.

Comment

Sooo... using mplayer with xv output works nicely until totem starts, so i guess totem sets an xv attribute which for some reason does not work on my machine.

I am banging my head repeatedly against the wall right now... for some reason the contrast setting in totem was set to 0 while the slider was at 50%... after moving the slider a bit my video appears... ahhh

Comment

In a direct comparison you can notice a subtle difference (less contrast with xv), but IIRC there's an xv attribute to change that if you cared.

visual glitches? Never had 'em.

No, you can't change it. It's wrong colors, period. Xv with Catalyst is supposed to only have correct colors when you connect your card to a TV. For a computer monitor, it's simply the wrong color space (black turns gray-ish and everything is a bit washed out.)

Glitches: Minimizing an Xv window and restoring it again results in a blank window. Also, borderless windows with a size-grip in the Xv area will result in a glitch that spans the whole bottom length of the window (as high as the size grip.)

All in one, OpenGL video is far superior with Catalyst and there's absolutely no reason (unless you can name one) to use Xv if your application supports OpenGL.